Stallman on the Linux Action Show
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I'm going to have to get back to you on that in either a detailed blog post or whitepaper. Its after 5 PM here so I have to meet up with the (. Y .) and spend time with her. You will be in my thoughts though. XOXOXO
I'm going to have to get back to you on that in either a detailed blog post
or whitepaper. Its after 5 PM here so I have to meet up with the (.Y.) and
spend time with her. You will be in my thoughts though. XOXOXO
If rms "doesn't choose his words wisely" I really wonder who does!
You still are not answering my concerns. You made the claim he wants people
to starve and go on gov assistance rather then write software.
When/where did he say that? You are totally dodging any real questions posed
to you.
If rms "doesn't choose his words wisely" I really wonder who does!
I'm saying to not take my view on Stallman personally as an attack on free
software as a whole. I think it has a great purpose but sometimes the leader
is very one sided in how things are and doesn't choose his words wisely.
"And I'll be honest. I find his personality grating. I probably wouldn't want
to hang out with him socially. However even if he does have a difficult
personality that doesn't make him wrong. I respect him in a lot of ways but I
don't know if I would want to be his friend."
That is my view exactly. I said many times I support the GNU and the ideals
of Trisquel. I just don't support his interpretation and execution in talking
about it and I feel the FSF would be better off with a new leader.
Read again what we wrote above or listen again what rms says: what "Stallman wants" is not at all what you pretend he wants.
His solution for "fixing proprietary software" is clear: write free software (and, again, he clearly says it during the interview you have just listened).
Again a either/or fallacy. Plus I think you are just putting words in his
mouth.
Can you show me where he says would rather have them starve and go on gov
assistance then make a living writing software. I believe in fact what he
says is he would rather they make a living writing free software but you are
twisting his words here.
I don't think he has ever said he would rather people starve and go on public
assistance. Now you are just making stuff up.
The question to you: if that's what you think all right. But then, why keep posting on a mailing which is mostly constituted of people with a different opinion? It's like joining a smoking cessation group to tell people there they are wrong to quit smoking.
People here gather for their common views of free software :) do you share that view?
--
Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
name at domain wrote:
I'm not trolling. Just because someone disagrees with you doesn't make them a
troll. Especially when my arguments are detailed and not simply "OMG GHEY!"
responses.
Stallman wants Microsoft to get rid of 80,000 employees. Stallman would
rather people stave and go on government assistance than make a living
writing software. Stallman wants everything to be shared and owned by a
"collective" but not just in software but everything including art. Stallman
doesn't have solutions to proprietary solutions and repeats himself and gets
angry when the person talking to him doesn't follow his script.
It is a childish and unrealistic view of the world.
Read again what we wrote above or listen again what rms says: what "Stallman
wants" is not at all what you pretend he wants.
His solution for "fixing proprietary software" is clear: write free software
(and, again, he clearly says it during the interview you have just listened).
I'm not trolling. Just because someone disagrees with you doesn't make them a
troll. Especially when my arguments are detailed and not simply "OMG GHEY!"
responses.
Stallman wants Microsoft to get rid of 80,000 employees. Stallman would
rather people stave and go on government assistance than make a living
writing software. Stallman wants everything to be shared and owned by a
"collective" but not just in software but everything including art. Stallman
doesn't have solutions to proprietary solutions and repeats himself and gets
angry when the person talking to him doesn't follow his script.
It is a childish and unrealistic view of the world.
I am a translator!
t3g, unlike some people here I actually agree with some of your points. I saw a few of Stallman's lectures and thought they were very good, but I never quite understood how one was supposed to earn a living developing free software.
Selling support is an option, but many companies don't want a support contract and would prefer to simply use the product without support (see e.g. CentOS). Most people also don't donate money to software they use, so earning a living by relying on donations is risky.
GNU/Linux could make money if an OEM pre-installs a distribution and pays the devlopers of the software money. Unfortunately, none of the OEMs have committed to GNU/Linux and GNU/Linux deserves at least part of the blame with the mess the desktop environments are in at the moment. One of the companies developing a GNU/Linux distro could become an OEM and build their own computers, but that requires a huge investment which might not pay off.
It should be noted that If the software is used alongside a service you can charge money for (e.g. making phone calls or hardware) then of course the service which costs money can subsidize the developement of the free software (e.g. the SIP client or the free drivers).
You can make a living by 'consultancy' one of the forms of which is 'code shop for hire' making tailored systems. The customer pays for any additional hours of coding on the product plus the install and data migration. Because they are then free to choose whoever they like to maintain the code this is a good deal for small companies who need customised software before they are big enough to have their own bespoke coders in house.
The typical proprietary deal for such would be that the customer pays for a license for the o/s and subsystems programmed against, pays a license for the notional product, pays for the extra coding of modifications, then pays an annual 'maintenance fee' on that and the original code which just gives them the right to pay for repairs to be made by one exclusive provider. Then they still have to pay for the install and data migration.
As you can see Free Software has a big cost and contract advantage over that.
Remember 70-80% of coding is on in house solutions. Many companies need to pay others who have the skills and get royally ripped off in the process.
You may not understand it but you cannot ignore the fact that companies working on free software can make a lot of money. Red Hat alone will make more than one billion dollars of revenue this year (it made 909.3 million dollars last year)! Any study shows that businesses around free software are thriving at a tremendous pace (while the rest of the occidental economy is suffering). Most of these businesses are small and local. As for donations it sometimes is viable too: The Wikimedia Foundation raises tens of millions every year. Then, and as rms insists on, most software applications have very few users. The most common cases is one single user ("custom software") but groups of people/companies with specific needs can hire free software developers to fill these needs too.
Actually, many free software business plans exist and are documented in white papers. This is just not what rms focuses on (although he clearly supports any way to make a living by writing free software).
I think in the LAS video they talked about Red Hat and the impression that I got was that Stallman would prefer Red Hat did not have their proprietary version even though they offer Fedora and CentOS. I do have to give Red Hat credit for legitimizing Linux back in the day and became the first profitable business supporting it. I think they still make the most money from Linux even today.
As for Canonical, they have not been profitable and the OS exists today thanks to Shuttleworth spending a LOT of his own personal money getting it started and maintaining it. I don't know how long this will last though and kinda why I feel some desperation from Canonical to make money by putting Ubuntu on smartphones and TVs. They have support contracts that you can buy for your business, but I really don't have the numbers of people that actually buy it.
P.S. Ubuntu seems to be gaining trackage on enterprise servers at Red Hat's expense: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/is-ubuntu-becoming-a-big-name-in-enterprise-linux-servers/10602
I believe we now are way out of topic... but anyway!
Neither RHEL nor Fedora (Red Hat does not control CentOS) entirely rejects proprietary software. In particular, both use kernels with non-free blobs. This is a pity and probably explains rms' disappointment (although it is only a guess: I have never heard him talk about Red Hat). That said, I believe it is safe to write that 99% of Red Hat's income directly relates to free software. Indeed, their business is centered around supporting servers and the usual non-freeness that creeps into free GNU/Linux systems is composed of desktop applications (Adobe Flash, Skype, Google Earth, Matlab, etc.) and/or blobs to drive Wifi or video cards (and servers use neither of them).
By writing that Red Hat "became the first profitable business supporting Linux", I assume you actually mean "GNU/Linux", i.e., the whole OS. You are wrong: before it, Cygnus Solutions, which was founded in 1989, was supporting the GNU (and then GNU/Linux) operating system and was profitable. It ceased to exist in 2000 when it was acquired by... Red Hat. Michael Tiemann, who co-founded Cygnus Solutions, now is Red Hat's vice president.
As for Canonical here is what Mark Shuttleworth was saying back in 2009:
All told, Canonical’s annual revenue is creeping toward $30 million, Mr. Shuttleworth said. That figure won’t worry Microsoft. But Mr. Shuttleworth contends that $30 million a year is self-sustaining revenue, just what he needs to finance regular Ubuntu updates.
I believe Canonical taking Red Hat's customer is not good news: Canonical looks far less committed to free software than Red Hat. On the other hand, Ubuntu's free packages obviously are a nice base to build Trisquel. :-p
I am a translator!
Magic Banana, I don't really believe Canonical these days. They seems to make lots of announcements (e.g. a deal with Asus netbooks, Ubuntu for TV) that lead to nothing in the end. The deal with Asus was announced in June, yet I cannot find a single Asus netbook with Ubuntu pre-installed. Here is the Slashdot article:
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/11/06/03/1917243/asus-to-ship-ubuntu-1010-on-three-eee-pc-netbooks
I only report what was announced. I am not really sure we should believe it either.
I am a translator!
Magic Banana, I don't really believe Canonical these days. They seems to make
lots of announcements (e.g. a deal with Asus netbooks, Ubuntu for TV) that
lead to nothing in the end.
I am a translator!
Ubuntu is offered for free whereas Red Hat costs money, so it isn't surprising that companies switch to Ubuntu.
As for adapting existing free software projects for small companies, I wonder how many people understand the source code of existing free software projects well enough to be able to offer such a service. Most free software projects have only a handful of developers, whereas Linux is an exception to this rule. Granted, developers could be hired to develop new software from scratch for a fee, but this model seems hard to sustain (you need to constantly find interested clients, whereas with proprietary software you simply develop one piece of software and license it).
The Openmoko phone provided companies a secure phone (the modem cannot switch on GPS and microphone) and an opportunity to develop custom software for it (e.g. the companies could develop a phone which encrypts the data sent using the internet). Unfortunately, this didn't actually happen.
Mozilla's free browser (Firefox) is funded by an advertisement deal with Google. Google hopes to make money from Android with the "Google experience" proprietary software which comes preinstalled on phones (Maps, GMail, YouTube, Market etc) which collect user information they can sell to advertisers. I won't be surprised if Microsoft makes significantly more money from Android (by making patent deals with manufacturers) than Google does. As already mentioned, Canonical isn't making much money and only exists because a multi-millionaire is funding it.
"Adapting existing free software projects" is not that common as a business. And you are right: the actual developers of the project are the first (and sometimes the only) ones to make money in this way or by implementing desired new features.
I believe more common (small) businesses do consultancy (what software to choose, how to migrate, etc.), integration (how to configure, how to make the applications talk to each other, etc.), assistance (updates, fixing problems in brief delays, etc.), formation (how to use LibreOffice in an efficient way, what are the new features of the application that has just been updated, etc.), etc.
I agree the FreeRunner somewhat failed. Sure, the phone was not perfect.. especially the bugs preventing to give/receive some calls! However, don't you think a little more financial involvement from OpenMoko would probably have bear fruits? At least I do not see any reason why this business model would be doomed to failure.
I also agree that Mozilla's business model is quite peculiar (although very effective). I would actually rather prefer that Mozilla makes a deal with a search engine such as DuckDuckGo or Ixquick, which are more respectful of the privacy of their users. On the other hand, Mozilla dealing with Google only has advantages for Trisquel's users (who unfortunately are a minority): this brings piles of money to Mozilla, hence many paid developers making a great browser... we use without the Google search!
I am a translator!
Most of the hardware in the Neo Freerunner is open, so companies could simply buy the hardware from Openmoko and fix the hardware problems themselves without needing to rely on Openmoko. Anyway, I never had any problems sending and receiving SMS messages or making and receiving calls when using the latest Openmoko distribution (Om2009) or QtMoko, although the call quality is very bad (unless I use a bluetooth headset) as I didn't get a buzz-fixed phone. I did however have trouble making calls or sending or receiving SMS messages with other distros (hackable:1, SHR).
I am a translator!
Most of the hardware in the Neo Freerunner is open, so companies could simply
buy the hardware from Openmoko and fix the hardware problems themselves
without needing to rely on Openmoko. Anyway, I never had any problems making
or receiving calls when using the latest Openmoko distribution (Om2009) or
QtMoko, although the call quality is very bad (unless I use a bluetooth
headset) as I didn't get a buzz-fixed phone. I did however have trouble
making calls or sending SMS messages with other distros (hackable:1, SHR).
I was trying to encompass everything from a Drupal customisation (https://drupal.org/drupal-services) where there are plenty of 3rd party providers. Through custom database programs as tailored by the original developers, the sort of thing that are hidden behind point of sale terminals or you see at your Doctors or Dentists etc. And finally to the potential to code a replacement for SAP.
The UK is littered with companies doing such things (how many have moved to free software I don't know). Many, many companies rely on such software for their core business. All of them I've seen could be done with e.g. a LAMPP or Zope intranet server. If Magic Banana is right and free software isn't making inroads into this then we are missing a very lucrative, if less sexy, trick.
Talking about a replacement of SAP, OpenERP is doing great in France (at least until I left it for Brazil).
There are many ways to ethically make money from software and this thriving momentum for free software businesses cannot be denied anymore. However that is a weaker argument in favor of free software than the one rms usually uses: developing free software is granting the users the freedoms they deserve, whereas developing proprietary software is exercising an unethical control on them.
I am a member of the April association, which promotes and defends free software at the French and European levels. 476 of its current 4944 members are companies, associations or organizations working with free software. The April produced a white book on business models around free software. Of course, it is in French but I am sure such a book must exist in English or Spanish.
Thanks for the info. The white book has already been translated to English here:
http://www.april.org/files/economic-models_en.pdf
It is now on my to read pile.
Thanks again.
You are welcome. That is great this white book was translated to English. I did not noticed it although this was right in front my eyes.
Thanks for the info. The white book has already been translated to English
here:
http://www.april.org/files/economic-models_en.pdf
It is now on my to read pile.
Thanks again.
Talking about a replacement of SAP, OpenERP is doing great in France (at
least until I left it for Brazil).
There are many ways to ethically make money from software and this thriving
momentum for free software businesses cannot be denied anymore. However that
is a weaker argument in favor of free software than the one rms usually uses:
developing free software is granting the users the freedoms they deserve,
whereas developing proprietary software is exercising an unethical control on
them.
I am a member of the April association, which promotes and defends free
software at the French and European levels. The April produced a white book
on business models around free software. Of course, it is in French but I am
sure such a book must exist in English or Spanish.
"Adapting existing free software projects" is not that common as a business.
And you are right: the actual developers of the project are the first (and
sometimes the only) ones to make money in this way or by implementing desired
new features.
I believe more common (small) businesses do consultancy (what software to
choose, how to migrate, etc.), integration (how to configure, how to make the
applications talk to each other, etc.), assistance (updates, fixing problems
in brief delays, etc.), formation (how to use LibreOffice in an efficient
way, what are the new features of the application that has just been updated,
etc.), etc.
I agree the FreeRunner somewhat failed. Sure, the phone was not perfect..
especially the bugs preventing to give/receive some calls! However, don't you
think a little more financial involvement from OpenMoko would probably have
bear fruits? At least I do not see any reason why this business model would
be doomed to failure.
I also agree that Mozilla's business model is quite peculiar (although very
effective). I would actually rather prefer that Mozilla makes a deal with a
search engine such as DuckDuckGo or Ixquick, which are more respectful of the
privacy of their users. On the other hand, Mozilla dealing with Google only
has advantages for Trisquel's users (who unfortunately are a minority): this
brings piles of money to Mozilla, hence many paid developers making a great
browser... we use without the Google search!
I was trying to encompass everything from a Drupal customisation
(https://drupal.org/drupal-services) where there are plenty of 3rd party
providers. Through custom database programs as tailored by the original
developers, the sort of thing that are hidden behind point of sale terminals
or you see at your Doctors or Dentists etc. And finally to the potential to
code a replacement for SAP.
The UK is littered with companies doing such things (how many have moved to
free software I don't know). Many, many companies rely on such software for
their core business. All of them I've seen could be done with e.g. a LAMPP
or Zope intranet server. If Magic Banana is right and free software isn't
making inroads into this then we are missing a very lucrative, if less sexy,
trick.
I believe we now are way out of topic... but anyway!
Neither RHEL nor Fedora (Red Hat does not control CentOS) entirely reject
proprietary software. In particular, both use kernels with blobs. This is a
pity and probably explains rms' disappointment (although it is only a guess:
I have never heard him talk about Red Hat). That said, I believe it is safe
to write that 99% of Red Hat's income directly relates to free software.
Indeed, their business is centered around servers and the usual non-freeness
that creeps into free GNU/Linux systems is composed of desktop applications
(Adobe Flash, Skype, Google Earth, Matlab, etc.) and/or blobs to drive Wifi
or video cards (and servers use neither of them).
By writing that Red Hat "became the first profitable business supporting
Linux", I assume you actually mean "GNU/Linux", i.e., the whole OS. You are
wrong: before it, Cygnus Solutions, which was founded in 1989, was supporting
the GNU (and then GNU/Linux) operating system and was profitable. It ceased
to exist in 2000 when it was acquired by... Red Hat. Michael Tiemann, who
co-founded Cygnus Solutions, now is Red Hat's vice president.
As for Canonical here is what Mark Shuttleworth was saying back in 2009:
All told, Canonical’s annual revenue is creeping toward $30 million, Mr.
Shuttleworth said. That figure won’t worry Microsoft. But Mr. Shuttleworth
contends that $30 million a year is self-sustaining revenue, just what he
needs to finance regular Ubuntu updates.
I believe Canonical taking Red Hat's customer is not good news: Canonical
looks far less committed to free software than Red Hat. On the other hand,
Ubuntu's free packages obviously are a nice base to build Trisquel. :-p
I am a translator!
Ubuntu is offered for free wheras Red Hat costs money, so it isn't surprising
that companies switch to Ubuntu.
As for adapting existing free software projects for small companies, I wonder
how many people understand the source code of existing free software projects
well enough to be able to offer such a service. Most free software projects
have only a handful of developers, wheras Linux is an exception to this rule.
Granted, developers could be hired to develop new software from scratch for a
fee, but this model seems hard to sustain (you need to constantly find
interested clients, wheras with proprietary software you simply develop one
piece of software and license it).
The Openmoko phone provided companies a secure phone (the modem cannot switch
on GPS and microphone) and an opportunity to develop custom software for it
(e.g. the companies could develop a phone which encrypts the data sent using
the internet). Unfortunately, this didn't actually happen.
Mozilla's free browser (FireFox) is funded by an advertisement deal with
Google. Google hopes to make money from Android with the "Google experience"
proprietary software which comes preinstalled on phones (Maps, GMail,
YouTube, Market etc) which collect user information they can sell to
advertisers. I won't be surprised if Microsoft makes significantly more money
from Android (by making patent deals with manufacturers) than Google does. As
already mentioned, Canonical isn't making money and only exists because a
multi-millionaire is funding it.
I think in the LAS video they talked about Red Hat and the impression that I
got was that Stallman would prefer Red Hat did not have their proprietary
version even though they offer Fedora and CentOS. I do have to give Red Hat
credit for legitimizing Linux back in the day and became the first profitable
business supporting it. I think they still make the most money from Linux
even today.
As for Canonical, they have not been profitable and the OS exists today
thanks to Shuttleworth spending a LOT of his own personal money getting it
started and maintaining it. I don't know how long this will last though and
kinda why I feel some desperation from Canonical to make money by putting
Ubuntu on smartphones and TVs. They have support contracts that you can buy
for your business, but I really don't have the numbers of people that
actually buy it.
P.S. Ubuntu seems to be gaining trackage on enterprise servers at Red Hat's
expense:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/is-ubuntu-becoming-a-big-name-in-enterprise-linux-servers/10602
You can make a living by 'consultancy' one of the forms of which is 'code
shop for hire' making tailored systems. The customer pays for any additional
hours of coding on the product plus the install and data migration. Because
they are then free to choose whoever they like to maintain the code this is a
good deal for small companies who need customised software before they are
big enough to have their own bespoke coders in house.
The typical proprietary deal for such would be that the customer pays for a
license for the o/s and subsystems programmed against, pays a license for the
notional product, pays for the extra coding of modifications, then pays an
annual 'maintenance fee' on that and the original code which just gives them
the right to pay for repairs to be made by one exclusive provider. Then they
still have to pay for the install and data migration.
As you can see Free Software has a big cost and contract advantage over that.
Remember 70-80% of coding is on in house solutions. Many companies need to
pay others who have the skills and get royally ripped off in the process.
You may not understand it but you cannot ignore the fact that companies
working on free software can make a lot of money. Red Hat alone will make
more than one billion dollars of revenue this year (it made 909.3 million
dollars last year)! Any study shows that businesses around free software are
thriving at a tremendous pace (while the rest of the occidental economy is
suffering). Most of these businesses are small and local. As for donations it
sometimes is viable too: The Wikimedia Foundation raises tens of millions
every year. Then, and as rms insists on, most software applications have very
few users. The most common cases is one single user ("custom software") but
groups of people/companies with specific needs can hire free software
developers to fill these needs too.
Actually, many free software business plans exist and are documented in white
papers. This is just not what rms focuses on (although he clearly supports
any way to make a living by writing free software).
El 16/03/12 16:37, name at domain escribió:
> GNU/Linux could make money if an OEM pre-installs a distribution and
> pays the devlopers of the software money. Unfortunately, none of the
> OEMs have committed to GNU/Linux and GNU/Linux deserves at least part
> of the blame with the mess the desktop environments are in at the
> moment. One of the companies developing a GNU/Linux distro could
> become an OEM and build their own computers, but that requires a huge
> investment which might not pay off.
>
>
thinkpenguin.com
Isn't the majority of work on the Linux kernel done by big companies like Red Hat, SuSe, and IBM? I know that there are people in the community that work on it, but the majority of updates to the kernel come from these companies that pay their workers to work on it. Heck, even Microsoft contributes: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/top-five-linux-contributor-microsoft/9254
If these three companies chose to stop paying their employees to work on the kernel, will the quality go down? People get motivated by money and if they can get paid to do what they love as their main job to pay the bills instead of doing it in their free time, I believe more attention is put into the work with better organization and a stricter schedule.
I mean... people freaked out with the news of Kubuntu's main maintainer no longer getting paid by Canonical after the 12.04 release. He even addressed his concerns as well. There was a big panic about the quality of future releases due to him no longer being compensated. Of course the Kubuntu community will take over and it will be interesting to see if the quality matches the ones when he was employed.
Well, the assertion "people get motivated by money" is questionable. I remember a psychology paper showing that children draw significantly better if they are not promised candies to do so (the generalization to any work and any reward is questionable too).
Anyway, I believe nobody would pretend that the Linux kernel would benefit from not having any paid developers since, as you wrote, they are the main contributors today.
But... what is your point? :-) Nobody here pretends that free software developers should never be paid for their contributions. Stallman does not say that either. Those contributions are positive whereas proprietary software developments are negative contributions from rms' freedom point of view. The former should be encouraged (e.g., with monetary rewards) and the latter discouraged.
People do get motivated by money. Take a look at Trisquel asking people for money with its membership plans that pretty much say Ruben needs money to keep this project going. If Ruben were to make the same if not more money from monthly donations for Trisquel than his real job, then he would work on this full time. If there were no members handing him money, then this project wouldn't be at the state it is now and be another project that had a lot of promise, but no sustainability.
There are two ways that Ruben can maintain this project and get money for it. He can go the traditional route by setting up a small corporation or asking for donations. There is so much overhead with taxes and employees to get a corporation running and I doubt that is what he wants at the moment. Even if he did get a corporation, he would have to make money by offering maintence plans or forging deals with OEMs. There is also the Canonical route by trying to get the OS onto devices like TVs.
Let's talk about the concept of donating. Isn't it just a socially correct and legal way of panhandling? I mean if I give money to a homeless man, I do it with the intention of using my own hard earned money to help that person with their cause. That cause can be food, liquor, or whatever it is that the homeless man wants. Donating is pretty much the same thing but without the stigma of asking for it on the street. There are also the tax writeoffs.
Don't fool yourself with people doing things "out of the kindness of their heart" mentality. Mozilla still gets 300 million from Google and push the whole "open web, we are out for you" saying even though their CEOs get paid a lot and they can have an office in San Francisco. If Ruben can get as much money as possible from people handing him money, he will.
I see a difference between "needing money" and "getting motivated by money". If Ruben was motivated by money I believe he would not have started Trisquel in the first place. The probability he will make more money with Trisquel than with another job exploiting his technical skills is very low. The same can probably be written about Mozilla's employees. And this matter of fact is a political problem: the system should reward positive contributions to the society and not those having a negative impact on it (how come people like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg end up being among the richest people on earth?). Citing myself:
Nobody here pretends that free software developers should never be paid for their contributions. Stallman does not say that either. Those contributions are positive whereas proprietary software developments are negative contributions from rms' freedom point of view. The former should be encouraged (e.g., with monetary rewards) and the latter discouraged.
As for your point about donation, I do not see much difference with giving money to a company. You do not control either what the company does with the benefits it makes on your purchases.
The difference between giving money to a company compared to donations is that when you pay a company, you know what you are getting the majority of the time. You go to the store and buy a tablet with certain specifications because that is what your money is exactly going towards. Same with creating a website. You give the company a proposal and then invoice them saying that you have created a finalized product with a certain amount of hours and that is what the client is getting. The expectations and final result are set in stone and agreed upon between the person buying and selling.
With a donation, it is more in good faith you are giving the money. That is why there are so many Kickstarter projects in the thousands to support an idea. The product may be a work in progress and may not even complete, but people hope that by giving that entity cash that it would motivate the developer and in return, help the person donating. Same goes for Trisquel where the members donate to give an extra bit of motivation to Ruben so he remains passionate about the product and the users (like myself) have some reassurance that his ideals and progress mimic our expectations.
Actually Ruben is living off his savings in the hope we'll be able to raise the money to pay him a Spanish minimum wage and sustain the project. There's a critical bug open because we've not hit last year's target for members.
https://trisquel.info/en/issues/4528
Given you're 100% behind free software and the 60 € / year minimum membership fee is only around the price of a quality anti-virus for a well known proprietary system have you considered joining? You get some benefits
I'll keep the donation in mind when I get some more cash later on. Due to the conversion rates, I will have to pay $80 and would have to be on behalf of the company I use for contract work. That should be ok right?
The only automatic method of paying for membership that exists currently is monthly by Paypal, using
https://trisquel.info/en/member
You would set the per month fee to the minimum 5 € on that page.
One off donations can be made using this page:
https://trisquel.info/en/donate
There it gives things like the IBAN & SWIFT for bank transfers.
If you want to get a membership via a one off payment, or a corporate membership then I'll have to ask other members to speak up and say how that might be achieved.
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